Council shake-up crucial to avoid gridlock

Date: 17/10/02

By Charles Grant and Alasdair Murray

The EU should adopt a more radical approach to its institutional reforms, writes the Centre for European Reform

THE problems in the European Council - the regular summits of heads of government - and the Council of Ministers are less widely known than those in the European Commission, but just as serious. Indeed, the inefficiencies of these two bodies, which together represent the interests of national governments in the EU, have contributed to the lack of leadership from which the Union currently suffers.

Member states agreed to make some modest reforms to the Council at the Seville summit in June. Heads of government vowed to cut back on the number of participants at future summits, reduce the number of sectoral councils and set up a new general affairs and external relations council, in an attempt to improve coordination of EU policies.

However, the EU should use the opportunity presented by the Convention on the future of Europe and the forthcoming Intergovernmental Conference to adopt a far more radical approach to Council reform. In particular, the member states should further limit the number of sectoral councils, remedy the problems posed by the rotating presidency and simplify the qualified majority voting system.

The purpose of the European Council is to allow prime ministers to think about big, long-term issues, in an informal atmosphere. But these days it seldom fulfils that role.

At the Laeken summit in December 2001, for example, heads of government devoted as much time to squabbling about the location of a new food safety agency as they did to debating grand strategy.

Meanwhile, the institution of the rotating presidency has lost credibility. Too often, the state with the presidency pushes its own pet projects at the expense of Europe's broader interests.

The plethora of separate ministerial councils has further reduced the effectiveness of the Council of Ministers. Each group of ministers has its own priorities and likes to legislate, sometimes in contradiction to the priorities of other councils.

Environment ministers, for example, have a tendency to create extra regulations, sometimes exasperating the industry ministers, who want to reduce red tape. Neither the rotating presidency nor the General Affairs Council (GAC) has a good record of coordinating the various councils.

The EU should build on Seville by introducing three further reforms. Firstly, heads of government should further reduce the formations of the Council, focusing its efforts on the creation of four 'super-councils': a new, streamlined GAC; Ecofin; foreign affairs, and an interior ministers council, covering the expanding dossiers of justice and home affairs (JHA).

Second, the EU must find an alternative to the rotating presidency. Smaller member states have suggested using team presidencies to handle EU business. Five member states, for example, would jointly share responsibility for preparing meetings and chairing councils over a period of, say, two years.

This would overcome the problem that some future member may lack the administrative capacity to run a presidency on its own. However, many of the weaknesses of the current system would remain, such as a lack of continuity in external representation, and the temptation to push national priorities.

There would be the additional difficulty of five governments trying to coordinate the work of all the councils. It would be better to dispense with the rotating presidency altogether. Instead, the Commission president could chair the GAC. This would help ensure that the Commission and the GAC worked together in coordinating work and in preparing for summits.

The foreign affairs council would benefit from a full-time chairman in the form of the High Representative, who should also assume the external functions of the rotating presidency.

Ecofin and the JHA Council should each elect one of their number as chairman, for, say, two-and-a-half years. There are precedents: both the economic and financial committee, and the EU military committee do this. The chair of Ecofin should also preside over the eurogroup, the informal ministerial council for euro business, to ensure smooth links between the two bodies.

The remaining sectoral councils - such as the new competitiveness committee - should become 'sub-councils'.

The relevant commissioner could take the chair, except when the sub-council is dealing with matters beyond the Commission's competence. The GAC would coordinate their work, apart from when financial issues were to the fore, when Ecofin would do the job.

Third, the Council should rethink its mechanism for taking decisions. The problem with the new system of qualified majority voting agreed at Nice is that no one bar the experts understands it. A much simpler method would be the 'double-majority', by which the Council would pass a measure if a simple majority of the member states and a majority of the EU's population was in favour. The first threshold safeguards the interests of the smaller countries, and the second the interests of the larger ones.

Ultimately, there is a strong case for an individual, probably a former prime minister, to chair the European Council. If the role of that chair is carefully defined, it need not lead to friction with the Commission President.

The EU must embrace such far-reaching reforms of the Council, if it is to avoid permanent gridlock after enlargement.

• Adapted from an article to appear in New Designs for Europe, published by the Centre for European Reform on 22 October.

Authors say the EU should adopt a more radical approach to its institutional reforms.

http://www.cer.org.uk http://www.cer.org.uk

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